Portraits of a Mountain

“‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD… that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.” Isa 2:3

Preparing an exposition, lesson or sermon on the Scriptures is like an artist looking out over a great mountainous landscape and preparing to paint. His/her painting will be a selective and limited interpretation of what can be seen. The whole experience cannot be captured on canvas. All that is seen cannot be captured, let alone what is heard and felt, the continuous movement or moment by moment dynamic, or how this all ignites imagination, connecting with past experience and glorious dream.

Only so much can go on the canvas and to put something down is to leave something out, but to put nothing down is to miss it all. So the artist puts down, paints, interprets, and does so with joy and yet a bit of sadness knowing more is released than can be detained. That is to say, as necessary as the interpretation is, this great landscape will always be greater than the interpretation.

So it is to survey the Scriptures. The teacher knows that to present a good lesson one cannot present too much. Too much could ruin a perfect lesson or outline. But sometimes, overcome by what is seen, the teacher/artist looses care for preserving the perfect outline. At times one must sit in awed stillness of the landscape, the exceeding work of the Great Artist, as golden moments pass unrecorded, lost and poured out as an offering. In such moments it is not about the perfect outline. In such moments the best we can do is sit and take in the view – not control it, outline it, or break it in to parts – just take it in as we submit before eminence and beauty, allowing transcendence to delay interpretation.

You might find several artistic renditions of the same mountain painted from the very same viewpoint, but the paintings will differ. The various artists would have viewed the same mountain at different times of day or year with varying degrees of shadow, cloud cover and sunlight. The same mountain, in fact, looks different each changing moment of the day. Perhaps the mountain has not changed, but how it can be seen is in constant flux and relevant to current context. Still, if two artists sat side by side at the same time, painting the same view, the final portraits would contain at least subtle differences because the one scene is filtered through two different sets of eyes. Each artist will highlight different features, fixate on various qualities and the interpretation of what the artists see is nuanced with distinct expression.

The mountain may not change, but how the mountain is seen may change from moment to moment. The same is true for Scripture. Not to advocate independent or private interpretation, but the scene, the mountain, is so very rich. It is not a one dimensional scene, but a dialectical, living moment. One picture is not enough. One final masterful painting cannot completely interpret the mountain or capture it finally on canvas. It will continue to speak and expose itself fresh each new day. The greatest of artists may have painted this, but the new artist must also climb the mountain again, set up easel, canvas and paints and paint fresh this new ancient scene.

As necessary as interpretation is, we must remember it is only that – interpretation. Interpreters and interpretations come and go but the mountain remains. Interpretation can be unjustly skewed. An artist might take unnecessary liberties and abuse free expression until the interpretation sits over against the mountain itself. We must not forget, ultimately the mountain interprets us. Failing to remain humble before the mountain, our interpretation can become exploitation and misrepresentation.

Come to peace with the fact that the mountain cannot be completely possessed. Resist the temptation to oversimplify a scene. Admit to its transcendence. Let what cannot be detained remain free. Hold what you can and let the rest just be. Come to the mountain again and again. Gather up your paints and sit before majesty. Let your eyes take in what your mind cannot completely comprehend and resist the urge to reconcile the two. Understanding comes, but it comes best to those remaining humble before what it greater. As Moses was on the mountain and requested to see God, his desire was honored only in part and part was enough.

As finite sits before the infinite, a tension remains between what is revealed and what is concealed, what is understood and what remains mysterious, what can be grasped and taken home, and what remains independent of us. At times, the best we can do is to take home a souvenir. We cannot posses, but we are possessed by the mountain. Again and again we must come, sit before it and paint.

Subversive Word

The message of the Kingdom and the Word of the Lord are subversive. The message is contrary to current status, a threat to the principal culture and prevailing perceptions. Though we like to put forth a message that never changes, even so, the message itself constantly produces change and creates new. Creating new does not seem threatening on the surface, but new is a threat to the sameness that supplies predictability and control. We prefer a managed view of the world.

When the message subverts, accepted norms may be seen as oppressive. As the Word creates inversion, our rules could be shown to be a means of keeping out the unwanted. With subversion, our reading of scripture may be seen as an editing of scripture. Could it be that a rigid interpretation of a wooden text is subversive the Word of the Lord? But when the Word is enlivened, becomes incarnate, suddenly it is close, immediate and un-managed. Now it is in your business, gets personal and presumes an intimacy with you that is startling. It gets behind the curtains, behind the facade, back where dirty dishes are, and the things we prefer to cover and ignore.

We can establish rules for interpreting scripture and these may be helpful, but the incarnate Word may not keep the rules. For good reason the sword is metaphorical for the Word - It cuts. It brings violence to the hearers. Most often believers use this sword parallel as a weapon against the enemy, but the enemy may be us. The sword pierces the heart of the believer as well as the unbeliever. The Word subverts believer and unbeliever. (See Mt. 10:34-39, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword.”v34)

The message is offensive and the offense is not accidental. We tend to remove the offense from the Gospel, that is, to shield people from its offensiveness, encouraging a hybrid, genetically altered gospel, a gelded version of the message. We know how to make the message socially acceptable and have become diplomatic with the Word – isn’t that nice? We are overly concerned with how the message may offend our unsaved loved ones. In the gospels, however, the offense was often directed at the community of faith. The outsiders seemed to be more receptive than those in the know.

To bring an inoffensive message is to say, “How ‘bout more of the old same?” It is to confess we have nothing new to offer. We have made the way to the cross too easy. We pave the Via Dolorosa, put in a street car, perhaps a trolley and fast track salvation. We just had to domesticate the message, for surely heaven did not intend to be so abrasive. So we display the gospel on the bargain rack with half-priced, buy-one-get-one theology.

“It is a free gift”, we love to say. Like signing up on Facebook, it’s free. Yet this is more than a little deceptive. In fact, there are strings attached. The Gospel doesn’t ask you for something, it asks for everything – not a yard sale, but a complete sellout. Not wholesale, but full price. Not only does it ask you to die – it asks you to “die daily”. The authentic message is not an easy message. It is disruptive. In the kingdom of God the last are first and the first are last. What was above is now below and what was below is now above. The proud are humbled and the humble are lifted up.

But make no mistake; they are “Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life”. These are words for bright light and hope - words that deliver from grim despair and repel the mugging shadows, bringing unexpected laughter and amazement to the poor and oppressed, suddenly upstaging the lingering taunts of doubt. They open up passage previously unavailable and give sight and clarity of thought, creating faith in our hearts. To the desperate they are lifesaving, allowing not only distant hope, but present joy and peace. Yes, beautiful words, dear and precious, wonderfully powerful and un-managed.

On Knowing God - Part 2

Science and modernity have done us all a favor. They have delivered us from our dilutions and demythologized the mysteries. What once seemed unknowable can now be known. What was once unseen, we now can photograph, download and share with the world. We have learned to take the complex and break it down into parts and comprehensible subparts. Our planet seems eerily small now that satellites and computer imagery have apparently charted every square inch of earth.  

These advancements would be exciting if they were not so disappointing. We love the data technology supplies, but aren’t we just a little disappointed, for example, to discover a beautiful sunset can be the mere result of smog? Even so, the cosmic mysteries are far from uncovered. The more science reveals about creation, the more it exposes how much we do not know. New discoveries often debunk old presuppositions and theory, supplanting what was once taught in the academy for hard fact. Relatively speaking, the universe is yet undiscovered and remains frontier.

From the microscope to the telescope, there are vast unknown and un-quantified qualities luring us with potential for discovery. And if this is the case with creation, how much more can this be said of the Creator? For all of our supposed knowing, how much do we not know? And is our knowing for the sake of relationship or the mere acquisition of information? That is to say, do we know him or do we know about him? And do we assume we can demythologize the Divine? Wouldn’t we be disappointed if this were possible?

I remember one evening several years ago when my daughter was just four years old, filled with wonderful innocence and endearing naiveté. We were out on the porch together enjoying the lights of the night sky. Snuggled up in my lap looking up at the stars she asked, “Daddy, get me the moon”. Time stood still as I savored the moment. Her request moved me with both delight and dread. It was a moment that revealed complete trust and confidence in me her father. And it was putting me on notice that soon would be the day for her disillusioning and my dethronement – the day she would be old enough to realize the hands that protect her will not always be there, that this more knowing figure in her life is not all-knowing, that her strong father is not almighty. Ultimately she would come to know I fail and am insufficient for all she needs. The day will come when she knows me enough to be bored with me and my limited interests and personality, when she realizes I am a small man in a very big world. I grieved her eventual disappointment.

But this is not our experience with our heavenly Father. As we mature and grow to know him he gets bigger rather than smaller. He seems to be more wonderful than before. Though we grow out of naiveté he remains amazing. He is with us and beyond us. With God there can never be disappointment with his depth, his richness, complexity or capacity. There is always another bend in the road, an un-crested hill with promise of hope, a new horizon and another world.

“O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” Ps 8:1-4 (NIV)

 

On Knowing God

“…I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord…”  Phil 3:8 (NAS)

Each new day brings potential for surprise and bewilderment. Every morning offers an unmarked frontier, putting forward something uncharted, beyond yesterdays’ horizon, suggesting the un-surveyed. God’s desire is for us to come to know him, to engage the process of knowing, to enter into relationship, but there is more to know than we can know and there is a surplus of the Divine unexhausted by all our powers of exploration and observation.

There is a knowing only experienced by way of divine and gracious revelation. It is bequeathed – a gift to be received and will not be owned by vigorous pursuit. Some things will only be known by the exercise of Divine sovereignty and will not be captured or possessed by way of determined ambition. We can know him, but our knowledge is never comprehensive. We learn, but learning should be taken with large doses of humility for there is no end to the learning, the knowing, the discovery.

Although we cannot exhaust the Scriptures, they do not exhaust the whole of God. The Scriptures are a faithful, steadfast and authoritative guide for the community of faith. God chooses to be known in the Scriptures, yet they do not wholly house, contain or limit him. They do not create boundaries for him so much as they create boundaries, limitations and the like for us. Although we pursue God by way of the biblical narrative, knowing the Scriptures is not always synonymous with knowing God. Scripture memorization is not equal to intimacy and Biblical verse quotation is not always indicative of worship or relationship.

We may be people of the Book, but as Christians we do not worship a book. Our Bible is an inspired means of knowing God, that is to say, a means to an end. It is not our God, an idol, or an object of worship. It is an inspired window allowing us to view of the Almighty, to focus in on his majesty and points us to the One we adore.

The Word of God in scripture invites us more to dance than academic endeavor, to romance as much as rigorous reading, to a kiss as much as critical encounter. It is alive as it comes off the page and into our lives now, incarnate, and whisper fresh. A full embracing hug, it is a lovesome song, enticing our soul, romancing our heart.

More than dry data, it is courtship, a poem, passionate encounter, deep with feeling and intimate lure. The Word is love calling to lover, gestures of love by God the great lover, creating connection points of ancient, innate familial knowing, bridging deep impassable places of the soul, transcending a purely rational encounter. Bypassing the arrogance of presumptuous reason, it catches us off guard with a humility and vulnerability that breaches the fortress of reasoned inquiry.

Hear the love song - a song of betrothal, pleading with distant lover - God pursuing us, inviting us into him, into his house, into a marriage covenant. It is a proposal, God on one knee, humbling himself in ways we do not expect, come off his throne to meet us where we are and to say, “I love you… Will you marry me?” God is putting his heart out there where we can fully reject him. It is willful vulnerability of the Divine and it is astonishing. How could he humble himself so? What else but love?

What Would God Do if He Did Whatever He Wanted to Do? - Part 2

Are we comfortable with God’s tendency to be fresh and new? We prefer patterns and predictability, reproducible principles. We presume to systematize, categorize, and alphabetize the Alpha and Omega. We would observe God with objective distance and take notes. We would put God in a petri dish and from our observations we would reduce him to mere formulas. We would edit abridge and abbreviate the Almighty. The Bible becomes a manual for “tips and techniques.” Perhaps our hearts are in the right place but our efforts may be misplaced. All the while as we observe and deduce theological recipes and formulas we unwittingly prescribe acceptable parameters for the Lord. How good of us to show God his place.

We resist accepting God for his unpredictability while he seems comfortable with unresolved philosophical tension, dichotomies and seeming contradictions. He himself is the ultimate paradox. He is light and yet clothes himself in darkness. He is lion and the lamb; high priest and the sacrifice; servant and king. He is near as a song and distant as a sunset. He is peaceable love and a bloodstained warrior.

He is comfortable with the unpredictable, undisturbed with ambiguity. We would have consistently reproducible patterns of action/reaction. But God is out of the box if he does what he wants to do and may not submit to our prescribed principles and methodology. When he is who he is without our prearranged notions of deity, he is raw and edgy. He becomes unrefined, emergent, without prescription and blueprints.

Remember John the Baptist? The way of the Lord is made in the wilderness, in the yet-to-be developed geography. Oh, but don’t worry. The theologians and church folks will come behind and domesticate the terrain, develop, organize, build, set in order. But God, doing as he will, frequents the fringe of development and frontier, seemingly most present where things are just becoming – out where things are not-yet, still unpredictable – wilderness.

The wilderness prescribes nothing for God, offers no limitations, does not disallow. The wilderness permits God liberty to be fantastical in imagination, wild with desire, powerful in his will. The wilderness can be an uncultivated twisted growth of tangled untamed that daunts more civilized hearts. But, you see, he isn’t so civilized. He is more wild than domesticated and the wilderness invites God to be himself.

Out of the wilderness he calls his deliverers. Out of the wilderness he claims a people for his own. There he tempers his own. His more notable servants he tends to bring by way of the wilderness: Abraham’s journeys, Moses, the children of Israel, David, John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul in Arabia, John the Revelator on a deserted island.

God seems to allow our buildings (see David’s exchange with God concerning building the temple - 2 Samuel 1:1-13) but do you think God rather preferred the portable tabernacle in the wilderness? Always ready for a move from one day to the next – unpredictability.

What Would God Do If He Did Whatever He Wanted To Do? - Part 1

“Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He marveled because of their unbelief.”Mark 6:5 (NKJ)

What would God do if he did whatever he wanted to do? What if we didn’t resist him with unbelief, cynicism, doubt, fear? What would he do if he did what he wanted to do?
Certainly he may come to church. But he has a tendency to misbehave in church. He contradicts some traditions, disorders the furniture, ruins the bake sale. He has put a beating on a few people – in church. When he comes he rocks the boat. He looks to see what you put in the offering; he challenges your theology, messes with your hermeneutic.

What if we let him out of the theological parameters we have fixed for him? Would he shock or offend us? Would he get beyond what we understand? And you can’t leave him alone. He might talk to the wrong people (e.g., the woman at the well, eating with publicans and sinners, etc.). If past behavior is any predictor of the future, he will misbehave. He will likely make us all uncomfortable.

Would he do that? Look, when you hear someone who says things like, “God wouldn’t do such and such” or “God wouldn’t use such and such a person”, this is usually someone who hasn’t seen God unrestricted. Some generous soul suggested we allow God a longer chain. What we ought to do is let him off the leash. It’s all over then.

Do we ask for revival because we are afraid to ask God to do what he really wants to do? We ask for revival (i.e., re-vive), to bring to life what was dead or to re-do an old thing. But God, doing as he pleases, may not choose revival or restoration. Why restore what has failed? No. Be sure, it may not revival or restoration he has in mind so much as a new morning.

We take his mercies from a Tupperware bowl or a zip-lock bag - you know, leftover God. Leftover God is safe. Leftover God is predictable. We know the routine. But it is not leftovers he has for you. His mercies are new every morning. New - not revived. Make no mistake, he doesn’t wish to revive so much as to reform (or re-form) – to make different. We want the good-ole-days of the past; he anticipates a good new day. He is not caught in paralytic nostalgia. We imagine God forlorn, reminiscent of the past. In reality he is into the present and the future.

What would he do if he did whatever he wanted to do? Would he provide thirst-quenching water to lesbians and gays? Would he woo the hearts of your neighbors? He might startle you, misbehave, surprise you, embrace you, convict you, whisper your name. He may just put on a show you have never seen before. He may leave you in the dark. He’ll save people you wouldn’t talk to, and love you all the while. If God does what he wants to do, anticipate incomprehensible redemption.